Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday October 05, 2010 @02:24AM
from the sounds-like-a-job-for-ben-heck dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After taking the stage at the Apple iPhone event in September, game developer Epic Games has finally revealed more about its plan to release Unreal Engine for the iOS devices. UE3 is incredibly popular on consoles, and its free UDK has been really great for us modders. In this new interview, engine boss Mark Rein says the developer envisions a future where all game devices are handhelds, with high-end processors inside: 'It feels like there's a great opportunity for game consoles to cease to be something you plug into the wall and rather become something you take with you. Of course it will be more than just your game console; you can have your productivity apps, your documents, and your media collections on it as well.'"

Ah, shut up, you just can't recognize a visionary. Just imagine a future where you'll have just hand-held device that you can play your games on, read your email, have your calendar, and make phone calls too. If only someone could start making a, dunno, a Nokia N-Gage [wikipedia.org]. And you could look like a complete retard while making calls with it too, for no extra cost!;)

(The geniuses at Nokia placed the speaker and phone on the side, so, yeah, you'd have to hold it in a completely ridiculous position to actually us

I realize that the quote may be a little far fetching or out of context, but really? Even if mobile phones did have the same capabilities of my PC/consoles, would you really want to play serious games spending half your fingers holding the thing? Crappy sound or at best stereo headphone speaker sound? 3-5 inch screens? Even tablets with their adequately larger screens suffer from the problems of holding the device, and touch covering up the picture. If you 'solve' it with joysticks and holders, you lose the portability benefit, and we're back to what's the point. I definitely like mobile games in either phone or portable console styling, but its delusional to think that the use case for video games will stride so far from today's gaming climate. Oh, Fallout New Vegas is getting released for an iPhone! I'm totally lining up for it. Lets not even touch the caveats of trying to run 'real' network multiplayers through modern carrier cell networks. I never even want to run it through my flaky Wifi.

Don't think of it as a replacement for a console, but instead of a way for you to take your console game out with you wherever you go. That has the potential to be a powerful combination. A full console game you play as normal at home, but while you're out you can still work on character progression, or play with your friends.

Sure, the gameplay experience on the phone isn't going to be identical, but it doesn't have to be. The added convenience of having your games with you wherever you go means that peo

So sure you may be right that portable devices won't completely replace consoles..... which is what the post that you replied was arguing in response to the topic being discussed. Try thinking before typing. It works for all ages.

Replacing all devices is even less realistic than complementing them... Unless battery technology makes a quantum leap, allowing power densities a hundred times what we have today, power will be an issue for a long time to come; you'll still be limited to a watt or two on a handheld device, while your console will be able to take advantage of a hundred watts or two.

Very true. But then again I'm not suggesting that consoles will be replaced by portables. In fact I'd say the much bigger handicap is screen size. I *like* a 40" rendition of Wipeout. The same game on a PSP doesn't really compare.

But with a power budget a hundred times higher, consoles will already be ahead. Yes, portable devices have passed previous gen consoles and will eventually pass current-gen consoles, but remember that current-gen consoles are way behind the curve. The seventh generation began five years ago with the 360, and the sort of hardware that could be produced today (5 years should be roughly 3-4 doublings by Moore's Law) is far more performant than the current consoles on the market.

Until phones have lots of lovely buttons, triggers and proper joysticks, I'm not going to be getting rid of my DualShock controllers anytime soon. And while it sounds cool, I don't really give a crap about screens on the controller either.. I've not looked at my controller when playing a game for over 10 years (ie, since I memorised which shape was on which button).

There's nothing to stop companies using phones as a wireless controller with a built in display, and built in storage. You can use the phone to display game elements distinct to your character, and to store your save games.

And I'll leave you with one final bit of food for thought: Imagine what's going to happen if something like WoW were to adopt that platform... An immersive MMO that you can play online at home with your friends, or play with friends at somebody's house, or just play on your own anywhere you like...

I realize that the quote may be a little far fetching or out of context, but really? Even if mobile phones did have the same capabilities of my PC/consoles, would you really want to play serious games spending half your fingers holding the thing? Crappy sound or at best stereo headphone speaker sound? 3-5 inch screens?

And yet, in spite of vinyl records sounding better, in spite of CD allowing a high fidelity, there is still a gadget named iPod (and rumors say it is/was sold quite massively).

The difference is that most people don't see the downsides in digital music - for the average person they don't care that it's not as warm as vinyl, or that it lacks the fidelity or range of CD. That's where gaming differs. A phone as a gaming devices offers the portability of a PMP, but it comes with some massive disadvantages (tiny screen, crappy processor, currently no decent multiplayer model) that the user would have to swallow. I don't doubt more people will start gaming on their mobiles, but we need

No, for most people the CDs don't actually offer a better quality, simply because the players they have limit it anyway. To enjoy the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a CD you have to get a decent (read: pricy) player, and even then most people won't notice (loudness war is also a limiting factor).

The difference between an iPod and a good CD player isn't nearly as big as the difference between playing on a handheld vs. console.

You're not seeing the real advantage. That being, of course, more money for Epic.

With traditional consoles you buy a game, plug in 2, 3 or 4 controllers and can play with your friends or family. With networked handhelds (which actually isn't new either, the PSP already did wireless multiplayer in 2004, and so did the Nintendo DS) you can play with several people too, but you're not going to do that with 4 people around a tiny screen. You're going to buy 2, 3 or 4 games. Ka-ching.

With networked handhelds (which actually isn't new either, the PSP already did wireless multiplayer in 2004, and so did the Nintendo DS) you can play with several people too, but you're not going to do that with 4 people around a tiny screen. You're going to buy 2, 3 or 4 games.

To be fair, a good amount of DS (I don't know about the PSP) games allow you to play multiplayer with just one of you owning the game. The other DS will download the needed parts of the game from you (it's actually called "DS Download Play" on the main menu screen) and you're good to go.

I've tried this with a couple of titles, and while it's a nice feature, it seemed to me that it was needlessly slow, forcing a lot of re-downloading that wouldn't be necessary if the code was optimised for this kind of play (for instance, in Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, if I and my opponent want to play the same map with the same army over and over, don't make us return to the menu screen and have to download the whole map and both armies again when they're already in memory, just have a "play again" o

Not to beat a dead horse on the issue, but Apple would never support such a model unless it was specifically shoehorned into their application store model. Since games can't run code from downloaded sources, there can be no boot-strap hub for iPhoneDownloadPlay in the case of iPhone anyways.

> Add the fact that this is, you know, Epic. The guys who fled the PC because they only had one rehash of the same game to offer again and again until it tanked. And they blamed it on the imminent demise of the PC market and piracy and whatever, when similar games sold several times the number of copies in the same period.

I would [mostly] agree with this. The latter UTs weren't as "good" as the earlier ones. The "fps community" moved onto new & better games... Battlefield Bad Company 2, Call of Duty

You're right of course, but this is more about access to content - with a console I can buy a second hand game dirt cheap, can't do that with digital content on a phone behind a walled garden. Likewise I can loan my game to a friend, can't do that with digital content on a phone. Of course, they'd trying to kill this even on consoles with various DLC tricks (putting a big chunk of the game in DLC that's free with purchase, so it's stripped out of second hand copies so you either buy new or give them the mon

And just when we'd finally realized extremely popular, open-source consoles.

We have open-source consoles; they're just not popular. PCs in a home theater PC case [wikipedia.org] are consoles in the sense that they are game-playing devices sitting in a home entertainment center. ION nettop PCs such as Acer AspireRevo are consoles in the second sense of "fixed hardware" as well as fitting in a TV cabinet. But apparently, the major labels have some sort of tradition [slashdot.org] against releasing multiplayer PC games designed for set-top use.

Heh... I don't know... Seems like they've managed pretty well with the first four thousand being sold out hours after the offer on production for the OpenPandora- and there's a waiting line for the next production batch.

If you're talking like PS3, X-Box 360, and Wii or perhaps the PSP and DS- yeah, that isn't "popular". That's more because there's not big money behind it with advertising, etc.

As for a tradition there, the item you linked doesn't say anything about that sort of thing. Set-tops would be l

Seems like they've managed pretty well with the first four thousand being sold out hours after the offer on production for the OpenPandora

Four thousand isn't a big enough market for someone to quit his day job and produce games for Pandora.

As for a tradition there, the item you linked doesn't say anything about that sort of thing.

Hit Parent. There was a question about why there aren't many games designed for set-top gaming PCs, and this is because there aren't many set-top gaming PCs in households. This is in turn because there aren't many games designed for set-top gaming PCs. CronoCloud traced this back to a tradition in the PC game market.

donotwant tag desired!
We love to play our games on our consoles, with a huge TV, a cold beverage and bag of chips or popcorn or etc beside us.
Not on some finger greased up portable small ass screen that is easily broken by a 10yr old pitching a fit when she loses a level / life.

He's not saying that what you want will disappear, he's saying that when you come home, your iPod (or whatever) will become your console, hook up automatically through the air, and you'll pick up wireless controllers to play with it.

It sounds a bit far-fetched to me, beyond the limits of the technology, but then many people who predict limits of technology end up being wrong.

Ok but you miss one thing: No matter what a phone can do, a non-phone can do more. That is just life. You can't design a 1 watt (or less) GPU using current technology that will be better than a 10 or 100watt GPU also using current technology. Sure it might look good if you compare it to older tech, but that isn't realistic. I mean ok you found an old card that was low end when it was released that has the same theoretical fill rate (please remember those numbers often high BSified). How about a current card

1) They could miss things on Sandy Bridge. Do keep in mind that we WERE supposed to see Larrabee LAST year and they boggled on it.

2) Arm A9's more scalable than you seem to give credit for- they're just showing 2GHz silicon right now that's destined for mobile hardware. If you relax the requirements for TDP a bit and design for that opening up of things, you can ramp up clock quite nicely. In the space for a console unit, I could envision someone talking ARM possibly into doing a 3-4 GHz version of

No I just don't worship ARM like so many/.ers. I have seen their CPUs and they are good at what they do. They are low power, excellent embedded chips. However they are no magic. They aren't some amazing technology that is so much better than anything else, that if we only used we could have much faster CPUs. No, actually, you could scale them up and they'd compete well with other CPUs on their scale. However they wouldn't be this amazing, fast, never before seen chip. That is just life. You find that Intel

I don't think the technology is that far away. After all wireless HDMI is available. The problem as I see it is that phones will always be far behind the computing power of a real console. Might happen when everything is so fast that the real bottleneck is the progarmmers and game designers. I'm not sure, are we getting close yet?

Seriously, I'd expect more intelligence out of the company that is on top of the engine game. This "Everything is going to be a mobile device," concept is STUPID. No, it isn't. Were it the case that humans only wanted one device for things, that a single mobile unit was the be-all, end-all of human needs, well then we'd already be seeing convergence in many markets around that idea. The technology is there, and has been for some time for most things, yet it isn't happening.

Why? Because we want devices that are more suited to various purposes.

Your post about a TV is spot on. Could I watch media on my phone? Sure. It is a smart phone, it could do that. I don't though. I bought an LCD TV. In fact I bought it AFTER I already owned the phone. Why would I do such a thing? Well because my phone is tiny. I don't care to sit and stare at a minuscule screen I have to hold up. I want to sack out on the couch and watch a nice, large picture. My TV lets me do that quite well. No, I can't pick it up and take it with me, but that's ok. The phone is for coming with me to make phone calls, the TV is for staying home and playing media.

To me this is like saying "Everyone is going to own nothing but a toaster over. Seriously, why would you want anything else? I'll make toast, it'll heat your food, it does everything. You should ditch your stove, oven, microwave, toaster, electric kettle, etc and just have a toaster oven. It is all you need." Ok, perhaps if you got nit picky that would be true. I suppose for small food sizes one could indeed cook everything in a toaster oven. However that is a pain. I'll keep my multiple cooking appliances, thanks.

Personally I for sure don't see phones replacing consoles/desktops for gaming for just the reason of size and convenience alone. However there's also the simple fact that until we invent a better battery technology, phone life is rather limited. You spend 3 hours playing a game on your phone, you'll be lucky to make a 10 minute phone call after that. It is just life. There is no magic way around this, without new technology you can't increase energy density of batteries, and screens, radios, CPUs, these all take power. You can decrease their power draw somewhat but the screen in particular just needs a lot of power, especially if it is larger.

Also people do like visuals and you can do more with a console than a phone. This is true no matter what the technology. If I can do a certain amount with a 1 watt GPU in a phone, I can do a lot more with a 10 or 50 or 100 watt GPU in a console. This is true for any given technology. Yes, a 40nm GPU in a brand new ultra-modern phone might compare somewhat favorably to say a chip from, say, an X-box. However that was built using 150nm lithography. If you compare a mobile phone to a current GPU, also built on 40nm lithography, it compares much less favourably. With the same technology, the chip with more transistors can do more.

I'm sure mobile phone gaming will be a big market, because it has the advantage of being the device people nearly always have on them (something to be said for having a game at hand when you are waiting in the doctor's office). However I am also sure that it will not be the be-all, end-all.

Also people do like visuals and you can do more with a console than a phone. This is true no matter what the technology. If I can do a certain amount with a 1 watt GPU in a phone, I can do a lot more with a 10 or 50 or 100 watt GPU in a console.

I can say this with some authority as a game developer who's working on console titles and with mobile phones:

You are assuming that there's another, more advanced console generation on the horizon. There isn't. Microsoft hasn't announced it, Sony hasn't announced, and Nintendo is still catching up to the last generation. Oh sure, eventually we'll get one, but I'd be surprised if we even got an announcement about a more powerful console within a year.

Not on some finger greased up portable small ass screen that is easily broken by a 10yr old pitching a fit when she loses a level / life.

You are mistaking his definition of Portable as today's definition of Portable.

From Mark from the Article:

Imagine a future Xbox 360 that is actually a tablet you carry around. It will have more power than 360 does today, with technology like Kinect built right in. Imagine walking into a bar with some friends, propping it up on the table and playing games like Dance Central or Kinect Adventures anywhere you go.

"Then when you get home that same device will use technology like AirPlay or wireless HDMI to connect to your big screen, you’ll pick up a wireless controller, or use your phone as controller, to play games like Gears of War.

Just remember this is from the same company that has beaten the dead horse known as Quake and Unreal Arena for waaaaaay too many years now. sure they are gonna push for new markets, as it gives them another excuse to sell the same shitty games they've been pushing forever. What I don't get is why so many other companies [wikipedia.org] can think of new and exciting ideas to do with their engine, and they can't. Have they become too big, is the boss an asshole and scares off the talent, what?

Epic Games has nothing to do with Quake - that is id Software. And Epic didn't make a game called 'Unreal Arena' - you might be thinking of Quake III: Arena, also by id. Aaaaand... You get bonus points for actually providing a link to a list of all Unreal Engine games made - a list that contains neither of your examples. The lack of reading comprehension is... well... epic.

What we’re seeing with the success of Madden, GTA and Call of Duty on iPad and iPhone is that big brands and big marketing, combined with high production values, creates mindshare that lets them stand out in a crowd. It’s a natural evolution. When the audience size and expected sales justify a publisher like Ubisoft to spend $15m on a TV advertising campaign for their latest Assassin’s Creed mobile app, they will. This will happen.

You'd think this is a joke, but no. Game companies often spend more on advertising than product development.

Considering how locked down consoles can be, I'd rather not be pushed into having my options in mobile technology be so limited as to have no real open options. Considering how everything seems to be pushing that way (there's only a handful of devices, all effectively out of date, that allow you to gain control without using a local exploit,) I'm sure hard times are around the corner for those who like to own our devices.

I'm sure I'll be flamed a million ways to Sunday by people who like hacking through a b

I don't understand the locked down console argument. It's a benefit, it's a gaming machine which makes cheating vastly more difficult to the point it's not a problem you ever really encounter in online multiplayer games.

The problem is that there's an industry tradition [slashdot.org] to conflate offline multiplayer [pineight.com] with a walled garden whose SDK agreement locks out developers working from home [wikipedia.org]. With few exceptions (such as Trine), PC games tend to support only LAN or online multiplayer, not two to four gamepads plugged into a home theater PC.

Boy, that's funny. I've run into a grand total of 1 cheater ever in my 300 hours of TF2 on the PC, but my younger brother runs into an average of one hacker per match when he plays MW2 on the console...

Of course it will be more than just your game console; you can have your productivity apps, your documents, and your media collections on it as well

Where have I heard of this idea? Oh right, it's called a fucking laptop.
When PC game developers stop removing single-computer multiplayer from their games, gaming laptops -which are usually great for working too- will be mobile gaming consoles. But oh noes, that would mean that more than one person can play with a single copy of their games! Stop those pirates!

When PC game developers stop removing single-computer multiplayer from their games

CronoCloud thinks your "when" is a "won't" [slashdot.org]. First you'll have to convince HDTV owners to use a nettop PC instead of a Roku box, Boxee Box, Apple TV, Google TV, or other walled-garden appliance to play video.

I can see this happening for casual gamers as most of the games they play can already be played on a smaller, handheld device. Like you really need a PS3 to run Tetris, The Sims or Farmville.

For serious gamers? Unless by "mobile" you mean a VR device I can mount on my head/stick in my retina, I don't think I'm going to be switching over to any "mobile" device any time soon. Gaming is important enough to me that I'm content having it as the main attraction in my living room.

No really, I'll pass thanks. I'm actually quite content walking through the door after a long day at work, plonking myself in my comfy chair, picking up the controller, and going straight to playing games without having to fuck around for a little while.

This will never be the case simply because handheld system will never be as powerful as consoles of the same price. Smaller components cost more, the designs of the systems are harder to make, keeping it all cool and low-powered brings even more challenges. For the gamers that want the latest graphics and gizmos they're always going to go for the console over the handheld.

Contrary to what some of the comments above seem to assume, I don't think he's quite saying that handheld consoles as we know them today will completely replace full-sized consoles as we know them today. Rather, from what I can make out, he's predicting that consoles will converge at some point where they are portable, but can also be connected up to the mains and your TV/sound system when you're playing at home. This might not be completely ludicrous. After all, I know a few people, including a few fairly

In this new interview, engine boss Mark Rein says the developer envisions a future where all game devices are handhelds, with high-end processors inside

The 3DS is a 2011-2012 handheld with a 266MHz processor that's slower than my desktop computer was in the mid-90s. You can argue battery life, but the PSP from 2004 has a faster processor inside of it.

Nintendo may not be the entire handheld market, but they're a huge share of it. He must be talking really, really, really long-term. At this rate, Nintendo will need at least five generations more to match current PC hardware specs in portable form. So if PCs don't get faster by 2040, then he may be right.

Or prehaps they will be outmanouvered by iphones, WP7 and android gaming phones..

Not all genres work well on a touch screen, and not all gamers can afford $800 per year for yet another phone line or $600 for an unsubsidized handheld device. Let me know when an Android gaming device with a D-pad and buttons costs $300 or less.

The 3DS is a 2011-2012 handheld with a 266MHz processor that's slower than my desktop computer was in the mid-90s. You can argue battery life, but the PSP from 2004 has a faster processor inside of it.

Leads one to believe that the general assumption is that mobile devices won't become more powerful and efficient. I don't think that is the case - rather, they'll continue to get more powerful until they hit the "good enough" plateau that desktops have been in for the last several years (and have been in before).

It is very likely that when such a convergence happens you'll get as pretty a game on a big screen as you're used to, just driven by essentially mobile hardware.

To me he's dreaming of putting modern console CPU/GPU into mobile phones - it's not going to happen soon. Not even in the next three years. But even then, playing a game on a big screen with a decent sound system seems like a much more enjoyable experience than tiny, unhandy controls and shitty sound.

"donotwant tag desired! We love to play our games on our consoles, with a huge TV"

"playing a game on a big screen with a decent sound system seems like a much more enjoyable experience than tiny, unhandy controls and shitty sound."

What would limit a 2020s super powered mobile device to be connected through HDMI (or something newer) to a 7680 x 4320 52 inch screen and then use 4 additional wireless controllers to turn this hand-held into a complete 4-player console?

Make me remember Game Gripper [zomgitscj.com]. Take a powerful enough cellphone, put there a bunch of games and console emulators (playstation, n64, mame, etc), and with this layer over the keyboard you have a portable gaming console (and a cellphone, gps, camera, media player and so on).

Between the greasy fingers and small screens comments, I think many are not paying attention to the current trends with the higher end smart phones, several android devices already have hdmi out, nearly all have the capability to hook up bluetooth devices and 3d chips are now the standard and storage density keeps increasing. If you throw in "cloud" based gaming its not very far fetched to see a time when your handheld can be used as a regular console. As long as the capabilities are there I'm all for it.

This is foolish.
It won't happen due to one constant; The temperature at which people say "ouch!". Whatever power you pack into a handheld device, there will always be a market for 20 of them stuffed in a box cooled by fans or pumps.

Not until apple pulls their head out their ass and gives us some hardware controls, or bluetooth compatibility with controllers or something. Trying to play DUCK NUCKAM on the ipad is a joke. Most games I've tried seem to be unless it's press to play or point and drag casual game.

There isn't enough screen real estate to warrant any useful 'app' that could do what a console can do. I don't want my phone to be anything more than a phone. Mobile AND console. Hey, guess what? Its called a laptop. You couldn't possibly sell me any phone that can run 'games' because it would suck to have to use the lame phone controls to play it. I may as well buy a Nintendo. Sounds to me like they're grasping at straws. There really is an end to what you can do with any device. May as well reali